Add oil to the pan and heat over medium heat. Add onion and cook, stirring often, until softened, 3 to 5 minutes. Add garlic and crushed red pepper; cook, stirring, for 30 to 60 seconds. Add the pancetta (or bacon), tomatoes and water; bring to a simmer, mashing the tomatoes with a potato masher or the side of a wooden spoon. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer, uncovered, until thickened, about 20 minutes.

About 10 minutes before the sauce is ready, cook pasta in the boiling water, stirring often, until just tender, 8 to 10 minutes. Reserve ¼ cup of the cooking water and drain the pasta.

Add the pasta, collards and reserved pasta-cooking water to the tomato sauce. Heat, stirring, until the pasta has absorbed some of the flavors, about 1 minute. Season with salt and pepper. Spoon into pasta bowls, sprinkle with cheese and serve.

Reviews 4

Simple and Tasty
I made this recipe as written only omitting the pancetta. My husband and I both enjoyed it thoroughly. I found it very simple to make and did not have an issue with the sauce not getting into the shells enough as another reviewer mentioned. I did simmer the tomatoes a bit longer than 20 minutes, stirring them periodically and using a potato masher to mash them as I went. I feel as though this created a sauce of ideal consistency for the shells and recipe.
Also, in response to the reviewer who disliked the time required to prep the collards: they can be prepped quite quickly by stemming them as you would with spinach, stacking all of the stemmed leaves on top of each other and then rolling like a cigar. Cut the collards once lengthwise and then slice along the cigar in roughly 1 pieces. I used this method to prep the collards for this recipe and the pieces were of ideal size.
Pros: Healthy, easy

January 27, 2013

By: EatingWell User

Very Tasty Dish
Although the greens and tomatoes were good, it didn't mix very well with the pasta. You really need a more creamy sauce for pasta shells so that the cream gets into and around the shells. I think a linquine pasta would work better. I also like my tomatoes cooked longer then the suggested 20 minutes so, instead of parboiling the greens, I just added the uncooked greens with my tomato mixture and cooked it down until the greens were tender. I had to keep adding a little chicken broth and a little sugar to take the bitterness out of the tomatoes and greens but it turned out quite well.
Pros: The dish had a great flavor
Cons: The pasta choice was not good

November 26, 2012

By: EatingWell User

Very healthy and quite tasty but there definitely are some cons to this dish
I decided to give this dish a 4 out of 5 stars mostly because of how healthy the dish is and how tasty it is for using a somewhat bitter green like collard greens. The bacon and tomatoes go so well together and don't forget the cheese it really adds to it! Great use for those bitter collard greens. The downsides: it takes MUCH longer than the estimated time..prepping a pound collard greens takes a while, enough to where negative point of such a time taking dish almost out weighs the quality of the dish produced. The taste just isn't worth the amount of time. Also, you'd need a pretty freaking large skillet to fit everything they suggest, I have a very large skillet and everything just barely fit. Either use your massive skillet or make this in a large pot. This is a great dish overall just annoying technical notes like the actual time of the dish and the actual utensils needed.

December 01, 2011

By: EatingWell User

Delicious AND Healthy!!
Printed this recipe out and it hung around for months before I tried it....I just couldn't wrap my head around collards, tomato sauce, and pasta. Finally fixed it and even my greens-a-phobe husband thought it was very good. Haven't tried it with bacon and we definitely use more parmesan which makes it even yummier!
Pros: Easy, inexpensive (even with the pancetta); healthy; delicious
Cons: chopping collards is a bit of a pain (and food processor didn't do the job)